BlackBerry Partners With Trend Micro on Mobile App Security

BlackBerry recently announced plans to incorporate Trend Micro's Mobile Application Reputation Service into its current system for analyzing mobile applications.

"Like other app store owners, BlackBerry already scans apps for malware to protect BlackBerry World customers," writes CNET News' Lance Whitney. "But the company will add Trend Micro's Mobile Application Reputation Service to take that protection a few steps further. Both current and new apps submitted to BlackBerry World will be scanned by Trend Micro's cloud-based service to hunt for malware."

"BlackBerry is working with Trend Micro to implement a more robust approach for addressing privacy and security concerns related to third-party applications," Adrian Stone, director of BlackBerry security response and threat analysis, said in a statement. "By incorporating Trend Micro’s advanced mobile scanning and detection capabilities with our own internal, proprietary application analyzing system, we can provide another layer of protection and assurance for BlackBerry customers."

"The partnership is an interesting one, given that malware authors are hardly going to be attracted to BlackBerry’s collapsed market share, leaving Trend Micro with potentially a light workload until BlackBerry can claw back lost ground," notes CSO's Liam Tung. "However, there are at least 70,000 apps on BlackBerry World and, according to a recent update by one of its execs, around 40 percent of the apps there are actually 'wrapped' Android applications."

"One of the Achilles' Heels in mobile security is the prevalence of malicious apps, even within authorized applications markets," Infosecurity reports. "DroidCleaner, for instance, was available in the Google Play store as a legitimate app. And in fact, Android is a particular target for malware, with bad apps increasing nearly sixfold in the third quarter of 2012. The 30,000 malicious and potentially dangerous or high-risk Android apps identified in June by Trend Micro increased to total almost 175,000 between July and September of last year."